Everfound (Skinjacker 3)

“It’s a good thing we’re here,” Mary told them. “Gas explosions are terrible things. They kill thousands every year.”

“I’m glad you’re in charge again, Miss Mary,” said one of her tried and true Afterlights. “Milos actually had us make bad things happen instead of stopping them.”

“Don’t judge him too harshly,” Mary told the child. “Who could blame him for trying to save the living from their sorrow-filled world?” Then she turned to the others and spoke loudly enough for all of them to hear. “We may not succeed today in stopping the accident, for visions of the future are very hard to change. But if the cause is lost, at least we will be able to run in and save as many children as we can from the light.”

Then she sent forth Milos and the skinjackers to do everything within their power to make things “right.”

Milos led the way, making sure each of them knew their own small part of the plan. Moose and Jill, of course, were aware of the larger picture, but not how it all fit together. Only Milos and Mary knew the full extent of the operation, and how devastating this “accident” would be—how many hundreds would die, so that every youthful soul could be reaped. Knowing that she trusted him to pull this off meant everything to Milos, and as he marched into the plant, skinjacking the senior engineer, he smiled at everyone he passed, for he knew today would be glorious!

PART FIVE

Stealing Life

Philosophical Interlude with Arnie, the Grand Inquisitor

How easy is murder when one calls it by a different name? How much easier is it for the conscience to condone “reaping” than “killing”—and when one knows that death isn’t the end, does it stop the killing hand for fear of retribution, or does it simply make it easier to kill, because, if life continues, how can murder be murder at all?

“Kill them all, for the Lord knoweth them that are His.”* That was the creed of the medieval crusaders, cutting down everyone in their path, the good and the bad, content in the knowledge that God would sort them out in the hereafter. They believed themselves holy warriors, bringing glory and reward with every bloody slash of their swords.

Mary Hightower, a girl from a more civilized age, needed no sword to do her holy work. Her weapons were much subtler. Her weapons were skinjackers, and the body of anyone on earth she wanted them to possess. And since her skinjackers could possess anyone, that made Mary Hightower the most powerful, and most dangerous person on earth, living or dead.

Was that a tap on your shoulder? Do you sense some unseen spirit whispering in your ear, announcing the end of everything you know? If you do, then Mary is close by, waiting for you with a loving smile, and her hordes are there as you fall, ready to catch you, and hold you, and keep you. Forever.

But not yet . . .

CHAPTER 36

Holding Patterns

On New Year’s Eve—the same night Mary first arrived in Odessa—Allie was arriving in Baltimore. Travel in Everlost took forever, but all it took for Allie to get from south Texas to Baltimore was a fleshie, a plane ticket, and a connecting flight. All it took to get Clarence into a first-class seat was a skinjacker who could provide him with cash, and an expensive suit to make him look the part.

Allie was never proud of using skinjacking as a method of stealing. But if there was anyone who needed a spiritual Robin Hood, it was Clarence.

“You make me feel like a person again,” he told Allie before they boarded that first plane. “I’m not sure that’s a good thing.”

Allie had skinjacked a well-dressed middle-aged woman who very well could have been Clarence’s wife. As Clarence no longer had any ID, she had to skinjack a couple of security guards to get him through. Easy as pie.

As they circled the airport waiting to land in miserable weather, the turbulence became so severe it nearly knocked Allie out of her host.

“Sorry to ruin New Year’s Eve for all you good folks,” the captain announced, “but I guess the old year is hurling hailstones at Baltimore. I promise to have you down before the ball drops.”

Allie could feel the tension filling the living—even the seasoned travelers. Allie felt tense as well, but it had nothing to do with the rattling of the jet. Her turbulence would start after they landed.

Time was of the essence, but the task was daunting. So Allie did something she rarely did. She took care of herself. After they landed, Allie skinjacked a wealthy woman with nowhere to go. Then she lavished upon herself and Clarence the finest New Years’ dinner Baltimore had to offer. Afterward they retired to their respective rooms in a penthouse suite.

But while Clarence slept, Allie did not. She opened the laptop of her host, and spent the night scouring the Web for information—and when old news reports proved insufficient, both she and Clarence hit the streets in the morning, hoping to dig up all the facts they could on the tragic tale of a Russian immigrant boy who was not entirely dead.

Vitaly Milos Vayevsky.

Born in St. Petersburg, Russia. Emigrated with his family to the United States at the age of eleven. Fell from the roof of a five-story apartment building at sixteen. A tree broke his fall. But not entirely.

He suffered massive internal injuries and a subdural hematoma that left him one step short of brain-dead. He spent more than a year in a long-term care facility, and then, when insurance and money ran out, the decision was made to take him off the machines that monitored his faint life signs.

Prognosis: grim.

The doctors gave him just a few weeks to live in such a nonresponsive vegetative state. His parents brought him home, for his mother was determined to make her son’s final days peaceful. However, those days turned to weeks, turned to months, turned to years. And now, in a bedroom, in a fourth-floor apartment, in a working-class neighborhood of Baltimore, the body of Vitaly Milos Vayevsky slept . . . while his soul journeyed in a world between life and death.

Each day, the drip, drip, drip of the intravenous feeding tube marked time for the family. His younger sister went off to college, graduated, married, and had a son that she named for him. Milos was an uncle, but he would never know.